Former Chief selector Chetan Sharma has no doubt that India will bounce back in the Test series against England and predicted that Rohit Sharma and his side will win all the remaining matches in the series to make it 4-1.
India started the first Test in Hyderabad strongly, and put England on the backfoot by bowling them out for 246. They had a strong performance with the bat and took a lead of 190 runs before England stormed their way back into the game.
Ollie Pope’s 196 helped England set up a target of 231 runs in the second innings for India to chase. The hosts were outplayed by the visitors in the second innings as Tom Hartley picked up 7 wickets to hand them the win by 28 runs.
Despite the loss, however, Chetan Sharma is upbeat about the chances of the Indian team. Speaking to Sports Tak, the former selector said he had no tension about India winning the rest of the matches. Sharma said that India played well in the first match, despite being on the wrong side of the result.
“Koi tension nahi hai, 4-1 karenge (No tension, we’ll make it 4-1). Athithiyo ka Swagat kiya hai hamne, koi problem nahi (We’ve welcomed our guests, there’s no problem). Ek mistake ho jata hay (Sometimes you make a mistake). I won’t call it a mistake, they played well.”
“Kahin na kahin ham pehla match hare hain (Somewhere we lost the opening match), toh kehte hain ki jo jeeta woh Sikander (there’s a phrase that the one who wins becomes a champion) but it’s not the case here. India have a lot of potential,” said Chetan Sharma.
History will repeat itself: Chetan Sharma backs India to repeat 2021 heroics
India finds themselves in the same predictament as in 2021, when England won the first match of the four-game series. However, the team bounced back in the next three matches and defeated England convincingly.
Chetan Sharma backed the team to do the same this time around as well and claimed India will look completely different in the coming matches.
“We had also lost the opening Test in Chennai three years ago and then we thrashed them [England] 3-1. Similarly, history will repeat itself and in the next game, Indian team will look completely different. There’ll be aggression and according to me, we are winning the series 4-1,” said Chetan Sharma.
